Resigned as President

I was elected President of the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Norway Association in 2006, and re-elected for another two year term in 2007. The 27th of January, I resigned my post as President and my membership of said organization.

The reason I felt I could no longer lead the association, was a longstanding conflict with the Chief of Administration. Since her election in January 2007, she has sent numerous e-mails with groundless complaints and accusations to the board and sometimes others. Additionally, she has repeatedly gone against board decisions on how to use e-mail, but the worst part of this is that she only sent the e-mails to some of the members and not all of them. The board has received one written complaint about this from a member that did not receive her e-mails. In addition, these e-mails contained her subjective opinions and misleading information presented as the truth or the board’s opinion. It has taken a lot of time and resources to clear out the misunderstandings and anger she has caused. For me, this culminated when she and a group of unknown members sent a report to the mother organization in Japan. This report was never presented the board. Furthermore, the report was written in Japanese although the association’s official language is English. This prevented the majority of the board from reading and understanding the content of the report. In Norway, this would be considered a highly disloyal action against the board and the general meeting.

In addition, I strongly object to the way this was treated in the mother organization. The report was shown to the head family without giving the board of the Norwegian Association or myself an opportunity to comment on it. The first I heard of the report was in a letter from the mother organization. They wished to convey advice and instructions based on the report. The advice and instructions had a very strong accusatory touch to them.

At the general meeting on January 27th, I asked that the Chief of Administration resign her position and apologize for her behaviour or that the board expel her from the association. Otherwise I would resign both my Presidency and membership. As the Chief of Administration showed no remorse, and the board was unwilling to take such strong action, I resigned my position.